Hello Michael,
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In the old days rice was harvested in a ritual way with a small hand held knife and by women. This out of respect for the "rice-soul". You can read more about it in f.i. the works of Skeat and Winstedt.
Nowadays it's harvested in an "industrial" way with larger sickles and often by contracted men.
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Actually, I can't recall having seen men harvesting rice from paddies yet...
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The grip depends of course of the size of the tool as well as other preferences both for harvesting and fighting. In the Sumatran style of fighting with the korambi as I have been taught the forward grip is preferred, not the reverse as seen in the US magazines and in the movies.
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You mentioned index finger through the ring (in harvesting context) - maybe I'm mixing up terminology?
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My bird-hilted Kuku Rimau is said to be collected in Lampung.
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Thanks!
Now, was the name originally applied/stated by the Lampung owner, a Sumatran runner, or a seller (say, in Singapore)?
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As I wrote before the meaning of a name is not fixed but what you make out of it, either we or the Malay websites you found.
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Yup, I'm not trying to focus on the name game here. However, before agreeing to stick a name on a given type of blades, I think we should first research the local use of any possibly suitable name. Otherwise we can easily end up with nonsense labels like "piha kaetta"...
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Actually you can find a lot of old colonial research on the development of sickles and curved knives in Asia.
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Research on the development of curved knifes? Must have missed that - references, please!
I have only found scattered bits and pieces in the primary accounts (Volz, etc.). Most ethnographic research expeditions with reasonably documented, surviving pieces were done in the late 19th to early 20th century. Finding well documented pieces from the 1st half of the 19th c. or earlier is tough for most types of blades. I'd also posit that there was a bias towards larger or more decorated pieces in the early collecting days (e. g. shown by the European curiosity collections which later evolved into ethnographic research collections).
Regards,
Kai